Is the Torah's moral philosophy authoritarian? Does it require that people submit to human authority figures simply because they are in authority as a political figure, an employer, and so on? Absolutely not, or not in the sense that many might believe. The closest thing to a passage that could be directly misinterpreted to promote true authoritarianism, solely by people making assumptions since the words do not state or imply such a thing, is Deuteronomy 17:12. Here, showing contempt for a judge of God's laws, such as by mocking them, is mentioned as a capital sin. You can see the words below:
Deuteronomy 17:12--"Anyone who shows contempt for the judge or for the priest who stands ministering there to the Lord your God is to be put to death. You must purge the evil from Israel."
However, the idea that the Bible demands authoritarian submission to other people not only contradicts other very anti-authoritarian passages in the prescriptions of the Torah, but it also misaligns with Deuteronomy 17:12 itself. The judges are only to be respected beyond their base human rights because they are enforcing the penalties corresponding to God's just nature, not because they have power within an arbitrary human construct. The evil is in disregarding this for the sake of personal whims. In reality, Deuteronomy 17:12 teaches that it is obligatory to submit to authorities who hold and exercise power legitimately.
The only authorities to always be submitted to are logic, God, and morality, none of which are human. Logical axioms are true in themselves and thus ground all other necessary truths of reason. The Bible never directly acknowledges them in the way I do in my speech and writing, but it does not have to, since they are true independent of God (as would have to be the case with necessary truths) and many individual doctrines of the Bible are overtly consistent with logical axioms, the criteria for it being possible for something to be true. Morality, unlike logic, only exists if the uncaused cause has a moral nature, as Yahweh is said to, and morality is by nature what should be done. God, if his nature is moral goodness, deserves universal human submission due to his status as a rather different metaphysical being altogether, but human authorities do not.
People must on an individual basis be in alignment with/submission to logic and morality in order to even possibly deserve submission from others. If they are not rationalistic, they are irrational fools, and if they are evil, they deserve opposition. If morality does not exist, no one deserves anything because there are no rights and obligations. It could simply never be mandatory to submit to evil people because they are in authority! Now that I have touched on what is logically true about authority whether or not the Bible is itself true and clarified the real teaching of Deuteronomy 17:12, let us examine example after example of anti-authoritarian passages in the laws revealed by Yahweh in the Old Testament, one of the places where some readers might expect to find the Bible most explicitly embracing authoritarianism.
For starters, slaves/servants must be treated well within certain boundaries or else they are entitled to immediate emancipation (and they are allowed to leave at whim in practically all circumstances without opposition according to Deuteronomy 23:15-16). They are not told to lovingly submit to further abuse to win their masters over to a worldview or personality shift or any other such asinine idea. All of this is antithetical to the idea that masters and mistresses are Biblically permitted to do whatever they wish to their male or female slaves because they are slaves, as if being in a position of power over somebody else logically entails that whatever one does must be righteous or at least not irrational or evil:
Exodus 21:26-27--"'An owner who hits a male or female slave in the eye and destroys it must let the slave go free to compensate for the eye. And an owner who knocks out the tooth of a male or female slave must let the slave go free to compensate for the tooth.'"
Employers are not to be regarded as always in the right simply for being employers or deserving of special protection from being identified as agents of injustice, when applicable, or singled out for condemnation before God and others. Employer authoritarianism, like parental authoritarianism, is rather rampantly accepted in many evangelical circles I have interacted with, yet it is directly rejected by passages like the following:
Deuteronomy 24:14-15--"Do not take advantage of a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether that worker is a fellow Israelite or a foreigner residing in one of your towns. Pay them their wages each day before sunset, because they are poor and are counting on it. Otherwise they may cry to the Lord against you, and you will be guilty of sin."
Whether they are employers or not, the wealthy, who have greater material resources and thus the time and money to entrench themselves in political power, are never to be favored over the poor, or vice versa, which would be illogical in itself and contrary to Biblical doctrines like that of the base equality of all people (Genesis 1:27). There should be no discrimination in favor of them or automatic positive disposition towards them due to their belongs and any social power they acquired through them:
Leviticus 19:15--"'"Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly."'"
This is no less true of the king (or queen), for monarchs and by extension other rulers are never declared exceptions, and Deuteronomy emphatically insists rulers are not exceptions--just after Deuteronomy 17:12, where it is said that anyone who disrespects the judges enforcing Yahweh's laws is to be executed. Again, this is utterly opposed to human authoritarianism. The king or queen should be put to death or otherwise punished exactly like any of their subjects:
Deuteronomy 17:18-20--"When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the Levitical priests. It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and not consider himself better than his fellow Israelites and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel."
This would already follow from Deuteronomy's overt tenet of showing no partiality because partiality is inconsistent with true justice, and it is also inconsistent with alignment with reason. Only assumptions or biases would ever compel someone to show partiality in the sort of way condemned here, which means anyone who does so has betrayed reason as well as violated the Torah's moral prescriptions:
Deuteronomy 16:19-20--"Do not pervert justice or show partiality. Do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the innocent. Follow justice and justice alone, so that you may live and possess the land the Lord your God is giving you."
In these and other ways, the laws of the Torah, which the text specifically ascribes to God and not to the preferences of Moses or any other Israelite, very obviously condemn many uses of power to treat others in particular exploitative ways. There is no call for universal submission of slaves to masters/mistresses, the poor to the rich, subjects to rulers, and more. On the contrary, Mosaic Law goes out of its way to repeatedly emphasize that there must be no escape for the wicked based upon their social standing, gender, nationality, wealth, or political power. It is not sinful to have authority, as long as it is not seized on the basis of irrelevant factors like gender and race, but absolutely no one should submit to anyone who is irrational or unrighteous. At best, this is optional. Authoritarianism is utter heresy against the necessary truths of rationalism and heresy against genuine Biblical doctrine.
No comments:
Post a Comment